Abstract
The marbled cat Pardofelis marmorata is a poorly known wild cat that has a broad distribution across much of the Indomalayan ecorealm. This felid is thought to exist at low population densities throughout its range, yet no estimates of its abundance exist, hampering assessment of its conservation status. To investigate the distribution and abundance of marbled cats we conducted intensive, felid-focused camera trap surveys of eight forest areas and two oil palm plantations in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Study sites were broadly representative of the range of habitat types and the gradient of anthropogenic disturbance and fragmentation present in contemporary Sabah. We recorded marbled cats from all forest study areas apart from a small, relatively isolated forest patch, although photographic detection frequency varied greatly between areas. No marbled cats were recorded within the plantations, but a single individual was recorded walking along the forest/plantation boundary. We collected sufficient numbers of marbled cat photographic captures at three study areas to permit density estimation based on spatially explicit capture-recapture analyses. Estimates of population density from the primary, lowland Danum Valley Conservation Area and primary upland, Tawau Hills Park, were 19.57 (SD: 8.36) and 7.10 (SD: 1.90) individuals per 100 km2, respectively, and the selectively logged, lowland Tabin Wildlife Reserve yielded an estimated density of 10.45 (SD: 3.38) individuals per 100 km2. The low detection frequencies recorded in our other survey sites and from published studies elsewhere in its range, and the absence of previous density estimates for this felid suggest that our density estimates may be from the higher end of their abundance spectrum. We provide recommendations for future marbled cat survey approaches.
Highlights
The marbled cat Pardofelis marmorata is a small, elusive, forest-dependent felid whose wide distribution spans the Indomalayan ecorealm, from Eastern India and Nepal, to Yunnan province, China, and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo [1]
Finer sampling interval lengths may improve precision of density estimates in Spatially Explicit Capture Recapture (SECR) analyses [36] and so we considered each 24-hour period as a sampling occasion
We present the first published density estimates for the marbled cat from any part of its range
Summary
The marbled cat Pardofelis marmorata is a small, elusive, forest-dependent felid whose wide distribution spans the Indomalayan ecorealm, from Eastern India and Nepal, to Yunnan province, China, and throughout mainland Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo [1]. The marbled cat’s diet remains unknown [5], but arboreal prey are assumed to be important and there is an observation of an individual stalking birds in the canopy [6] and another potentially preying on a juvenile Phayre’s leaf monkey Trachypithecus phayrei [7] Despite their obvious arboreal adaptations the scientific literature includes camera trapping records of marbled cats walking on the ground [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22], so this felid’s activities are clearly not restricted to the trees
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